Install CM12 ROM on Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo (GT-I9300I & GT-I9301I)

With Android 5.0 Lollipop covering the whole Android community and a large lot of devices, custom firmware manufacturers have laid down their hands at work to enter the showdown as soon as possible. CyanogenMod is one such custom firmware crafter who have started their work and is continuously working hard for the first release of CyanogenMod 12 to the public. While operating, the team has already pushed major bits of their newly built code to their git for the world to track and contribute. Whilst, developers at XDA have also begun and compiled this beautiful piece of work for their devices.

One such amazing device is the Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo, which is the Qualcomm variant of the amazing Galaxy S3. It runs on a Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 processor, with an Adreno 305 GPU, 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display and a few other improvisations, plus it also comes with Jellybean 4.3 out-of-the-box and is upgradable to KitKat 4.4 officially.

While there has been no word from Samsung about future updates regarding the device, Rox (Senior Member – XDA Forums) has shown his gratitude and compiled CM12 ROM for Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo GT-I9300I and GT-I9301I, from the source. The first version itself came out on 24th of December, but before that was the contributed hard work of our fellow developer, to fix the bugs and clear the ROM for a better user experience. The current build is labelled as Stable, but consists of some minor bugs (list below), which are assured to be fixed in the near future. In general, CyanogenMod is itself working very hard matching with Android 5.0 Lollipop’s source code. A few things that you will be observing in the builds are:

AudioFX

AOSP Browser

CM File Manager

New and improved Messaging app

Music Player with material interface and extra features

Dialer tweaks

Sound Recorder

Brightness control

Quick pulldown

Notification count

Battery style and Battery percentage

Left-handed mode

Power button end call

Volume button tweaks

Ambient display

Double-tap to sleep

Wake on plug

In-built color calibration

Increasing ring volume (Ascending ringtone)

Notification and Battery light modifications

CM System profiles

Privacy settings (Blacklist, Privacy guard, Notification filter)

Trebuchet launcher

CM Wallpapers

Apart from these, CM12 has tons of tweaks within, which makes it a remarkable ROM. View the concerned XDA thread for more information on this ROM and participate in the discussion with other ROM users.

Confirmed Bugs

Call Audio in secondary SIM (GT-I9300I)

Non-working camera for some devices (Fix available)

Near Field Communication (NFC) not working

Before You Begin

Backup your device completely.

Charge your Galaxy S3 Neo to at least 60% battery level.

Keep USB Debugging enabled. It has nothing to do with ROM flashing but it might prove helpful in case of some mishap.

While the device is connected, open a command prompt window and type in the command below to reboot directly into TWRP mode, or you can also follow the manual drill by pressing the required buttons to reboot into recovery mode.

adb reboot recovery

Once you have entered the TWRP recovery and see its main screen, its time to install the ROM.

Before you start the flashing procedure, you need to wipe the current partition or in simple words – remove the current ROM.

To do this, tap on Wipe, go to Advanced Wipe and check the System, Data, Cache and Dalvik-cache boxes.

Now, swipe the button on the bottom of the screen to start the wiping procedure.

Now, go back to the TWRP main screen and tap on Install.

Browse to the location where the downloaded files were placed and select the ROM zip file.

Install the ROM and when it’s flashed, go back and tap the Install button again. This time, select the Google apps package and install it too.

Following the same step, also add the fix zip file to the flashing list.

Swipe the button on the bottom of the screen to confirm and begin the flashing process.

It will take a bit of time and once done, tap on Reboot > System.

The first boot might take some time, so just sit back and let it do its job. We have successfully installed CM12 ROM on Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo GT-I9300I & GT-I9301I. You might feel some features to be incomplete or minor hiccups, that’s because the CM code is still not complete. The stability will improve with every new build that comes out, give your appreciations to the developer for contributing to the Galaxy S3 Neo community.

Comment below and provide us with your valuable feedback, and help us build a better community.

Hi Rakesh, I need ur assistance asap please. After trying to install the TWRP on my phone, it is now stuck on the samsung logo and not turning on. I put it in recovery mode but i am getting ‘team win’ recovery, I am not seeing the samsung recovery.